In Vino Veritas
by Archea
Summary: AiberxL - my first take on this unusual but endearing pairing. Set during the Yotsuba Arc, a doomed romance complete with a few tips on Japanese sweet wines. For Miss Bright.


_**Disclaimer **__: MM. Ohba and Obata, whom I keep confusing, are their happy genitors. _

_**Spoilers **__: Aiber's real name and most of the data pertaining to the Yotsuba Arc._

_**A/N**__ : I've had to mess up the timeline a bit. Plus, El-Rebia should spell Er-Rebia in English but I've kept the French name for obvious reasons.^^_

_Dedicated to Miss Bright in the hope that she and I are not the only Aiber devotees on the FF scene. Budding fans must read her lovely « No Ordinary Con Man »!_

**In Vino Veritas**

"Thierry Morello" says Thierry Morello, and raises his glass in a salute to his computer screen. "Morello is actually a diminutive for Moor – you wouldn't believe it looking at me but according to the family myth, our ancestor, along with a few hundred next-of-kins, cantered all the way up from Oum El-Rebia in Morocco. My guess is that he smoothtalked his way into Provence, changed his name and tricked the first village beauty into giving him descendants. "

He presses his palm against the glass, letting the red pool warm to his contact. Wine has been a good teacher to Thierry over the twelve years he has been practising as a con artist. "Hope he's proud of me. "

"El-Rebia ?" the Gothic letter on his screen squeaks and Thierry laughs his soft straight laugh, the conman's Sesame to many hearts and deals. "Why, yes, Monsieur L. Perhaps you would like me to use Rebia as a codename since you've made it clear that we'll communicate again ?"

But the letter flickers briefly as if shaking its head in disapproval. "A naive idea. Rebia would give you away to anyone endowed with a smattering of geography." The flicker pauses before the voice resumes in what, at a lower pitch, would be a meditative tone. "Since I now live in Japan, we could always spell it right to left. Aiber."

"Aiber it is" Thierry says in mock-solemnity and L responds with a brief chuckle before the screen goes blank.

AiL - AiL - AiL

This exchange is the final call in a highly bumpy ride that began with Aiber and one of his crew summering in Saint-Tropez, where they posed as millionaires in a millionaires' resort; things going very wrong and Aiber stepping between his co-conman's gun and a terrified eight year old millionaire-to-be; Inspector Deneuve's men leaving a back door conveniently unattended while arresting said co-conman; Aiber flying to Manhattan a few months later to stage a watertight « landlord scam » implying a penthouse with a dramatic view on the Upper West Side; Detective Coil's men condoning Aiber's improbable story as to the eleven deposit checks found in his possession while retaining the checks (Aiber still hasn't found where the leak came from); Aiber flying home with a serious dent to his Voltairian scepticism which he had to endure until the mysterious L, who also happens to be Coil _and_ Deneuve, graced him with a personal call and a baptism free of charge.

Aiber tells his wife Valérie that he gave L his true name (not the ancient French patronym on their bell) because he knew that L already knew it. Which is nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth as Valérie is quick to note when the Gothic Letter becomes a regular caller and Aiber spends more and more time talking to a screen. The truth, of course, is that Aiber has come to rely upon his invisible Providence to a degree that puzzles and frightens her. For Aiber, trust is a currency with an exchange rate that must be made to reap a maximum profit. Up to now there was only one person he trusted freely and unconditionally – herself.

Aiber married Valérie because he loved her and wanted her to love him for himself. That was the one truth he thought would see him through his adult life. It did for a while, and he can still remember the glad nights when he came home to kiss and tell, with his wife's ear to his mouth, his wife's laughter against his throat and the chilled champagne on the Boule coffee table. Valérie, his Desdemona, his Penelope, the keeper of his naked self. But then... but then the boy came, the child they both wished for, and Valérie began to change. Cutting short Aiber's Arabian tales with questions like "But what will you tell him when" and "Don't we have enough money now to".

Of course they have enough money, Aiber answers irritably. Aiber's exceptionable skills – his golden touch and quicksilver tongue – have ensured that. But, _chérie_, you know what I am. And then he's gone for another month of roguing, and comes back to find Valérie looking more and more unhappy until — "Half a man at home, is that what you want ?" he yells and "Well, be careful you don't lose your _better_ half" she snaps before the two of them look up at the boy standing in the kitchen doorframe with a hesitant "papa ?" on his lips. Aiber swears under his breath, then smiles and talks softly to his son. He waits until he's alone to open another bottle of Chambertin under the shiny white appliances' glazed look, since wine and wife no longer spell alike.

He loves them both. Honest to god, he does. He knows that Valérie is right to call him selfish but — ay, there's the rub : his self is there. It's not just that he thrives on the kicks, the thrill, the _warmth_ of conning. Rather, as he keeps repeating in a language she no longer speaks by heart, that he can't be a whole man without it. Just as it takes sun and dusk to make a day, it takes Thierry and Aiber to make him — the simple man and the quick-change artist, the faithful husband and the cheater by trade, the _bona fide_ Frenchman and the multinational crook, and the sum of him lies in this fine balance point between art and truth. Rest and play. Being and becoming.

When Aiber tells L "I do not do this because I want to" in one of their late-night sessions, L simply says "I know". L, who is also Coyle and Deneuve, seems to grasp Aiber's addictive need to pour himself into another's skin while never losing sight of who he is. Why else would he have gifted him with a name that hides yet proclaims Aiber's origins – as L's initial perhaps does ? (L ignores the friendly probe.)

To Valérie, L is for the lightning that will one day blast her man into ruin. She fears the letter which squeaks out in the dark of night and has become one of the reasons for what Aiber, with a modest smirk, calls his "little business ventures". Aiber senses the fear and tries to make up for it as best as he can. But his self is no longer encased in Valérie's arms at night. L is his new keeper – not his gaoler, as Valérie believes, but his gatekeeper, opening more and yet more secret passages between the _chic_ apartment towering over the Arc de Triomphe and the parallel universes where Aiber can finesse his way among the wealthy and the vile. L has become Aiber's drug mentor, and on the night when he calls to inquire in his quiet warped voice if his client would like to help him catch a schizophrenic mass-murderer possibly using supernatural weapons, Aiber doesn't hesitate. He sends his inner Voltaire on a sabbatical, kisses his son goodbye, promising to hunt for his missing Pokemon cards once the other chase is done with, kisses Valérie (his voice low, lissom, his adrenaline high) and the next moment Paris is slumping below an expansion of blue and Aiber's excitement rockets to new summits. Finally, _finally_, he is going to meet L.

AiL - AiL - AiL

At first, Aiber is rather taken aback to find that his providential Trinity was made flesh in the person of a gangly twenty-something with a Neandertal gait, no sartorial instinct whatsoever and a compulsive sweet tooth.

It's not what he expected and Aiber's empathic imagination rarely lets him down. But then, he's never yet had to figure out a man's personality from a monitored squeal.

Still, L and the whole L-related business prove so enthralling that Aiber's dismay fades out after a few hours, never to return. Speak of kicks and thrills ! He's higher than God in Heaven and the hypothetical Kira, or Kiras, in their Kir-ish dreams.

Work, as he soon tells L with a wink, is a piece of cake. Not only does Aiber get his own Gothic letter (and it's bigger than Wedy's) but he doesn't even have to write his lines. His mentor is a bit reluctant to let him play Eraldo Coil, but Aiber won't be talked out of his brilliant idea and launches into the part with typical gusto. Soon enough, the gentlemen from Yotsuba Inc. are jostling one another to leap through his hoops and balance millions on their noses (he also gets an interminable text message from Mr Kida comparing his hair to orphaned sun rays – apparently a quotation from some minor poet of the Naka period— and would Eraldo-san be interested in a little evening jaunt to the traditional sake-houses in Kayabukiya, but sagely ignores it). "Fast work" says L and Aiber's adrenaline swells with pride. Of course he is doing this for the fun, merely for the fun. Well, perhaps also because, in his rather French logic, impersonating L's impersonation means that he is infiltrating one of L's multiple selves, which is only one step away from penetrating the real self. Aiber is very keen to figure out L.

He tells himself that he should be worrying about Kira but to be frank, his whole attention is focused on the 24/7 show at L House. Notwithstanding his dashing looks, Aiber can morph into non-entity when circumstances require, and when he's not answering Mr Kida's pressing phone calls about hush money and sake jaunts he spends most of his time at headquarters, a discrete shadow with his arms crossed and his eyes open. After a while, the others don't seem to mind him. Though Aiber knows better than to engage Chief Yagami in professional chit-chat, he has soon detected another anxious father in Aizawa-san and young Matsuda is close to hugging the kind foreigner once he proves a Pokedex expert. Even silent Mogi steps up to him once to ask if Aiber knows the recipe for old-fashioned ratatouille (he does – it came in handy five years ago when he was selling Martha Stewart that fake allergen insurance scheme). So the foreigner is allowed to loiter on, carefully registering what he sees.

And there is much to register.

The way Soichiro Yagami looks at his son, for instance, when he thinks himself unobserved. Or the way Watari's presence can always be felt backstage when everybody has left but L and his prime suspect. And then — L himself, reckless, extraordinary L, always on the watch, sometimes watching Aiber watch his crew with a snip of a smile and a finger on his lips whenever Aiber's eyes flick to him. Aiber peeps and peeps, but vision is obviously not enough. So he waits for the right opportunity, and when Matsuda raps a timid knock at Aiber's door to thank his improvized stand-in after the Yotsuba fiasco, it takes only forty minutes of compassionate "hums" and "ahs" for the latter to catch up with the last ten months' bulletins. They leave him very thoughtful. He tries to share his thoughts with Wedy, but Wedy doesn't care much – she's here to do her job, pack her pay and take a ride back home. When Aiber quietly suggests that there might be more to young Light than his fawn-eyed pleas for cooperative work, Wedy laughs loudly and asks if he's jealous.

Aiber shrugs but goes on observing Light. Meek and mild be damned, there's something snail cold in the boy and not just because he is the only male under forty who remains immune to Misa-Misa's impish charms. (Aiber himself must fight temptation at times — temptation to give the little pest a sound spanking and a good facial scrub.) Aiber's face remains pliant and smiling when he chats with the young man, but his inner conviction is rock solid. L cannot be wrong.

October proceeds to die a natural death and Aiber's frustration climbs a notch. What on earth are they waiting for ? It's obvious that one of the eight must be Kira and unless they force him to call his bluff more and more people will be struck off. L seems to feel the tension, too – Aiber can see how his fetal crouch becomes more pronounced, how he relies on the comfort of sugar and rubs his naked feet against each other absently. Aiber's trade has made him sensitive to body language and it irks him to see the others recoil before L's signs of distress when they are so prompt to show concern over Soichiro's torment, Light's exasperation or Misa's frailty. Why should L alone be treated as a freak when he bends under the case ? Time to jolt the case forward, Aiber decides, and comes up with another bright idea. "Be careful" a worried L admonishes him, but Aiber remarks loudly and publicly that L has saved him more than once – hear, hear – and throws in a sarcastic quip about freedom debts to stay in character.

AiL - AiL - AiL

He is less proud of himself when the case or chase comes to a close and he misses the third Kira by a few gunshots. But when he apologizes to a wounded Yagami-san, the latter simply shakes his head — and, to his interlocutor's surprise, Aiber's hand. "You are a good man", Soichiro says and Aiber searches in vain for a ready reply. By the time he arrives for the final act, the curtain is already set to fall over the villain's corpse. Aiber has been in Japan for less than three weeks and his part is over.

So he stays on.

The atmosphere at headquarters is very strange. Officially, the case is closed. Light Yagami has been given a free hand to resume his studies at To-Oh University. Their second prime suspect resumes her own career as Tokyo's new shooting star. The policemen probably come and go, talking not of Michelangelo but of death statistics, past and present, and post-Kira obligations. Or so Aiber supposes — he prefers to avoid the Situation Room, keeping to his room or leaving the building incognito for a few hours : he hasn't forgotten Wedy's crash course on its security system. Trays of food materialize before his door and once he catches a glimpse of Watari making his bed as he returns from touring Tokyo's business center. The old gentleman simply inclines his head and holds the door open for him. A few days run their course and Aiber, watching a licorice sky from his bay window, takes up his cell phone to call Valérie only to find that he cannot make it past the first international code. Instead, he makes it past the door.

When he comes back by suppertime, his door is unlocked and L is sitting on his bed, his naked feet clasped in his arms.

Aiber closes the door slowly and crosses the room to sit on the chair next to the bed. He has forgotten to switch on the lights and L's eyes are a cipher in the dusk. No one has written him lines for this.

Then L's face moves from cipher to a smile which is another puzzle until its author says : "Today is my birthday, Aiber-san. I was born on the 31rst October."

Aiber-san, conman extraordinary, remains tongue-tied.

Thierry Morello, Frenchman to the core, recovers his quickly enough. "Then we must toast you", he offers and laughs suddenly, either because L's inexplicable joy is infecting the dusk or because of the idea of L drinking alcohol. "I'm sorry, Ryuzaki, if I'd known... look, Watari has kindly set up a stash in my room, the man obviously knows all about my _péché mignon_, but damned if I see any fruit juice... unless you'll settle for a glass of tap water... "

L's smile widens, and Aiber goes on laughing with the clear-headed fizzy feeling that usually comes after his third glass of Mumm. "Wait, wait, wait. We can do better than tap water. Lemoncello ? Lemoncello is stoned lemonade, you know. Bailey's ? You like coffee. Or... got it ! Chocolate Mint Schnaps !" Aiber's voice is triumphant but L shakes his head. "No. Gekkeian plum wine."

... Gekkeian plum wine ?

"Behind the Bailey's", L goes on, his eyes never leaving the seasoned criminal now energetically ransacking his own closet. "They wait for the first frost in Wakayama to gather the plums so they are sweet and juicy." Aiber finally locates a plump purple bottle and, while looking frantically for a second glass, hears the bottle pop open behind his back like the magic lamp in the Arabian tale his mother used to tell him. He is no longer poor but L is a genius and the room has taken to smelling like a flight of May blossoms _and_ _what the hell is with him _? Aiber takes a deep breath and turns around to find L handing the glass to him.

"But you must drink too."

The enigmatic birthday boy goes on smiling. Then, slowly, meditatively, he dips his index in the glass he is still holding and lets it brush his customary spot on his lower lip. Aiber blinks. By the time L has licked his finger, there's nothing he can say because the glass is firmly pressed to his mouth and he is drinking and drinking, and the wine goes to his blood, leaving it red and dazed. All the Mouton-Rotschild and Romanée-Conti bought for a queen's ransom and labelled with loving care by his own right hand pale before this. It's cheap. It's sticky. It's utterly, utterly intoxicating and Aiber's hand closes upon L's, steadying the glass against his mouth until the last purple drop has been consumed and L's empty fingers remain pressed to his lips.

L seems to hesitate, then, as if he had been there all the time, repeats Soichiro Yagami's words carefully : "You are a good man, Aiber-san."

Aiber's inner monologue at this point is less ethically oriented. It hovers between _Merde_ and _Mon dieu_.

But twelve years of practice have taught him that a con artist's survival depends on his sense of timing. It's what makes his trade so close to the comedian's craft. There is a time for speaking and there is a time for letting the other speak, there is a time for cunning and there is a time for doing, and half-way between thought and act, there is no time for letting others chose in your stead.

Aiber's last thought is for his ancestor, cantering up into _terra incognita_. Then he stands up and, letting his heart pick up the pace, crosses the space that separates the chair from the bed.

AiL - AiL - AiL

November the 1rs is the Day of the Dead in France. Aiber gives it a passing thought and grins.

AiL - AiL - AiL

What comes next is a bunch of crazy halcyon days. The bed has become their illegitimate headquarters into which they seek shelter when L can escape the rest of their bunker for a few hours of rest and play. Aiber no longer leaves his room. He would turn off his phone but for the chance that L might join him during the time when he is not in bed. Instead, he buries it under the pillows when there's a call from France, ashamed, tormented, oblivious when L's steps can be heard outside the door and the late morning gleam ricochets on the Gekkeian's benign purple belly. Under the gleam, on the pillow, L's mouth curves into a smile that is both child-like and faun-like.

Topsy-turvy days, with every frontier trampled upon. Their lovemaking is awkward and haphazard – the only regular element in it the sweet plum wine from Wakayama which leaves their mouths a little tart and more daring every time. Sometimes L's body takes the upper hand and Aiber, well-toned Aiber, bends and opens earnestly to him. Sometimes it's Aiber's turn to coax L into unfolding in his arms, his shoulders arched back in pleasure, though when L finally dozes off he returns to his hunched posture in Aiber's lap, with Aiber mentally comparing himself to a mother marsupial. Insane, happy days interrupted by snacks of red bean cakes and whispered tales. Aiber tells a little of his childhood in the sunny, grimy streets of a Marseilles suburb and L sometimes reciprocates with clipped sentences. "I miss the trees", he says once. And, while kissing Aiber's gold-dusted chin : "that beautiful light" (Aiber freezes, but it turns out that L is thinking of a stained window he saw as a child).

A trieve, though not an armistice. Aiber can see that L, when preparing to step down again to his fencing hall, is grim and confused. L still hasn't caught all of his Kiras and Light Yagami, much to Aiber's disquiet, continues to haunt the place. But then, confusion is their staple diet these days. Take Aiber's case : in his native country, it is still deemed impossible by many that a married man, a father, should be attracted to another man. Homosexuality should be left to left-wing celibates or, as France's only female Prime Minister once famously declared, to public school British boys. But then, of course, many would also say that it is impossible for a thief to be a good man.

Aiber says bullshit and reaches for L. L provides kicks and thrills that Aiber's body never knew existed, nor his soul when L's eyes dilate with wonder under his care, or L's throat gives the little moans and gurgles that Aiber finds so endearing. Night morphs into day and the dark circles under his lover's eyes seem to have faded a little. On their third day together, L agrees to try a salad. Aiber feels elated.

AiL - AiL - AiL

On the 4rth of November, he receives two phone calls.

"Aiber, please do not leave your room today" L says in the early morning and Aiber cannot help laughing. "Afraid I'll take a French leave?" he teases.

The hours come and go, Aiber remains. He takes to walking from bed to door and back to bed, and once he goes as far as opening the door but the corridor is empty and he gave his word to stay. Thief's honour.

Watari's steps must have been muffled by the carpet. The tray is on the ground when Aiber re-opens the door at three and the Gekkeian responds bitterly to the cold meal. He gives up at six and tries the phone but neither answers.

It is half past ten when the phone rings back and by this time, Aiber is ready to dissect the whole citadel with his coffee spoon if his lover is not on the other end of the line. L's voice brushes his ear – as tranchant as on the day he told Aiber that nobody played Coil but himself.

"Aiber-san, I want you to leave headquarters."

Aiber cannot tell what is the greater shock, the dismissal or the formal address that precedes it. "Please explain yourself", he manages to say with the Gekkeian's tart trail on his palate and the one injunction – _play for time_ – in his mind. And L explains at length, in his neat, scalpel-clear words, telling him that Kira has killed again and that it has become too dangerous for Aiber to stay. "That's for me to say" Aiber says — bluntly — and that is when L explains tersely about the Shinigami's existence and the Shinigami eyes that will allow any Kira on the premises to know their real names. By the time L is done, Aiber is sitting on the chair, now facing the window, with a dark purple view under his eyes.

"Everything Watari and I had on you, I have deleted" L is saying. "You have never been arrested, never even been suspected. Wedy's relatives make her case more problematic but if you go undercover, there is a fair 75% chance that you may survive."

"And yours is... ?" Aiber asks in the neutral voice he has used two weeks before to request a ten million fee from Mr Kida.

Silence answers much in the same tone.

"Take your own advice, then." If only his mouth let him breathe _and_ talk, he could focus on keeping his voice blander. "Cheat. Hide. Lie. Lie low, that's it, pretend you're gone..." — Aiber laughs briefly – "... pull a Matsuda on them ! _Merde_, man ! What use is a dead detective to a case ?" No, that won't do. Slower, lower, breathe, get attuned, think, _think_, that's L you're dealing with so there must be one fucking logical trump somewhere in this shuffle deck. "Come to France with me." The words tumble out before he can frame them - urgent, graceless, and, he realizes with rising self-contempt, utterly unconvincing.

There is a pause before L's predictable answer. "Kira is not in France."

Aiber lashes out with Gallic abandon, cursing and pleading until his voice has been frayed to a tattered screech. When he can no longer scream, he hisses. In his mind, he sees L standing in front of his mammothean computers, his phone hanging from the slim fingertips that only a day before were touching the rim of Aiber's glass, Aiber's jaw, his arms, his thighs. The vision fuels the wrath. Still Aiber rages, and still L answers "Please be careful" till the view becomes one dark cover and the Frenchman's eyes close in exhaustion.

They open to a sky turning a blank page across the glass partition and a phone still craddled in his lap. Aiber takes up the phone wearily but hears no ringing signal. Instead, there is a very faint, very far sound of someone breathing against his ear, like a sigh that will not tell its name. As Aiber presses the phone closer, the sky begins to rain.

Aiber looks at the blurred dawn and speaks the quick three words he once told Valérie, and they'd better sound as true as they did then. Then he hangs off, packs up and, not bothering to shower or shave, takes his French leave. As a last-minute thought, he grabs the unopened bottle left on the window sill.

The rain is pouring as he steals a last look at Tokyo from his taxi window.

AiL - AiL - AiL

Valérie asks no question when he tells her they must leave their eight-room flat and move into Belleville, that busy honeycomb of ethnicities and trades. They rent a very small house near the Buttes-Chaumont and the boy soon learns that he must not mention his previous address or, in fact, his previous name to any of his new schoolmates.

Aiber pretends he is a financial consultant working at home but no one in their surroundings seems much interested anyway. In the morning, he drives his son to school, does some shopping for Valérie and strides up and down in the Buttes until it is time for lunch. In the afternoon, he checks on his stock market shares, reads, tries his hand at gardening. When his son is back from school, Aiber plays some Pokemon games and helps him with his homework. Valérie pretends this is the happy normal life she craved and Aiber does his best to play the part.

He does allow himself one interlude from 6 to 7, when his wife is in the kitchen and his son before the TV set. Aiber sits in front of his laptop and gives his heart free reins before he switches it off and helps Valérie carry the dishes into the living-room. He holds little hope of communication – while the task force have means of contacting his alias, his only interlocutors were L and Watari — but at least he can check his Aiber mail and comb the Net for news of Japan.

And then, one early December day, he finds that there is one message waiting for him in his Aiber inbox. Aiber's heart rears, then thuds to a dead still. The mail is from Light Yagami.

(_... Mon dieu..._)

In his well-waxed college English, young Yagami deplores that he must send Aiber a sad piece of news. One of their mutual acquaintances has met with an untimely end – in fact he died in Light's arms the day after Aiber left Tokyo. The writer apologizes for not having informed his late friend's friend of their friend's demise earlier on but priority had to be given to said friend's spiritual and temporal succession. In fact, Light is happy to tell Aiber that their mutual friend had named him (Light) as his rightful heir and that he has agreed to take up a mission which he intends to fulfill at all costs. Every help, every ally is precious in this fight, and Light would be honored if Aiber agreed to renew contact with him in the spirit of cooperative solidarity that he (Light) has been eager to promote from the first.

The bastard has even scanned a close-up of a nameless grave in twilight.

Aiber finds that he is standing before his desk, hunched over his computer screen, fighting nausea with every word he reads. So Kira is stepping into the late Ryuzaki's shoes. Never did metaphor sound more inept and Aiber's fists clench on the hard wooden surface as he stares at Light Yagami's new signature, still in parenthesis for now but soon to colonize his screen as a ghostly reminder of its previous owner.

Aiber's sense of proprietary ethics has always been wobbly to say the least, but the thought of that psychotic little twerp sporting L's blazon fills him with white-hot outrage.

Seconds breed minutes in what seems to him an eon-lasting pause. He can hear Valérie calling the boy to help her set the table and there's a smell of warm meat filtering through the door. Then Aiber slowly unfolds his hands and places them over the keyboard.

Seventy-five percent, no less, no more. But gone is the thrill of uncertainty and Aiber is no longer taking any chance. He reflects for another minute before typing a carefully worded answer. It is a warm message, using the same oblique style to mix friendly condolences with a touch of cynical humour. Aiber is sorry to hear about their mutual friend's precocious departure from this valley of tears. He is quite certain that young Mr Yagami will prove worthy of his new career choices. Should Light ever need Aiber's professional assistance, the latter will be happy to offer it at a bargain price in memory of their former Kira-bound ventures. Will Light please convey Aiber's greetings to his honorable father and his father's honorable colleagues? And to his charming fiancée ? Should their new mission leave them some time for a continental escapade, Aiber would be more than happy to show them the City of Light, haha. Meanwhile, he remains at MM. Yagami's disposal.

Aiber grins a little as his fingers beat a final tatoo over the keys. _Yours truly, Thierry Morello_.

Of course, L would say that the probability of Chief Yagami hacking into his son's compacted email storage when – if – he learns of Aiber's death is 1 ‰. Aiber, ever the gambler, will back _this_ chance.

He feels oddly clear-headed as he checks his watch, aware that 7 p.m. in France means 4 a.m. in Japan. Light Yagami is a self-disciplined young man with a healthy sleep agenda : Aiber has an advantage of three hours over Kira, twice more than is needed. He is leaving his family a clean slate and a well-fed bank account – courtesy of Yotsuba Inc. He wonders if he should also leave a note to apologize for his selfishness but no, let them put the blame on a high-wired lifetime. Instead, he turns off his computer, stretches his arms and rummages in the main drawer of his desk for the cellar key.

Connoisseurs will tell you that all cheap wines, including Gekkeian, must be left to breathe at least one hour before consumption.

FINIS

_A/N While working on this fic, I stumbled upon Nekonekoazaraku's account on DeviantArt. Her main inspiration is Death Note – Aiber/L is her OTP (lucky me !) so I had to rec her here, but she also does Mello/Matt and Light/L. And her art, whether humorous or poignant, is truly stupendous. Please go visit her gallery – it's accessible and worth taking a detour !_


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